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GenieGo - Stuck on "Waiting to Prepare"

I opened an incident with tech support last week. In a follow up call the GG support center gave up and escalated the problem to Engineering.

Last evening I got a call from a GG expert who advised me there was a workaround that has gotten HR24-500 users back on the air vis a vis GG. Engineering contacted a case management guy who walked me through a DVR procedure that effectively reset and reloaded everything except the recorded content. After a 30 minute journey which included a trip through diagnostic screens and keypad entries that I never knew exisited, the DVR and GG were playing well together.

Bottom line, after the HR24 reset, my DVR is gleefully preparing and downloading content previously ignored by GG. For those of you in need, the GG support hotline is 800-442-1635. The entire support staff consists of 4 guys scattered across planet earth.

Also, FWIW, I learned there are probably less than 2,500 GG's shipped and installed in the USA. A surprisingly low number given the DIRECTV subscriber base of close to 30,000,000.

For some reason some DVR programs download immediately but others freeze at "waiting to prepare". Once a program reports waiting to prepare on one client, no other client device can initiate a successful download. Once the offending program is deleted, by trial and error other programs properly download without delay or start "preparing" instantly. Then after a complete preparation, the download begins thereafter..

I am seeing two problems.

(1) Some programs stubbornly refuse to begin a "preparation" and need to be deleted to free up the GG.

(2) If any client (of the five allowed clients) reports a "waiting to prepare", no download activity will begin on a 2nd client.

Have done a hard reset of the GG and reinstalled the GG app on all devices but still see these problems.

Nope, all are standard DIRECTV programs via satellite. Programs include archived episodes of Breaking Bad, HBO series such as Game of Thrones, and movies from Cinemax or Showtime, and wife's HGTV CH 229 home improvement shows, just to name a few.

FWIW, I do not see a pattern. Have 6 DVR's and have tried various downloads from each. Some work, some do not.

The one constant is that if the selected program reports "waiting to prep", other activity queues up until the delete is processed.

The GenieGo can only prepare/transcode one program at a time. So if one show is locking up the GenieGo, a second won't start on a free device.

When you're trying to transcode a show, are you also trying to use that same DVR to playback another show? I believe that will stop your show from transcoding.

Understand the notion of GG only doing one task at a time. Also, none of the DVR's are in playback mode during these tests. I probably need to refine my test samples across all 6 DVR's tomorrow to be sure there is not a pattern I am missing. I did reboot one of the DVR's and made sure sharing was "on" even though GG doesn't care about playlist sharing. Post reboot I still have the original problem.

There have been reports over the months from HR24-500 users that GG won't prepare anything from that DVR.

Also so you don't knock yourself out with trying to figure out which one is an issue, there's an quick and easy test.

Assuming you are at home, just try to Watch Now any program from any DVR. I've found that the ability to stream in home is one way to look for a problem with Preparing shows being stuck.

They are linked. If you can't Prepare, you can't Stream.

Further testing isolated the problem to my one and only HR24-500.

If I try to stream, I get a message "HD DVR too busy, try streaming later". If I try to download, any and all programs freeze at "waiting to prepare". The HR24 is connected to the internet and its content can be seen on any other DVR via whole-home, but GG access is futile. Did a full 2 min hard reset, no improvement.

All other DVR's (HR20-700. HR21-100. and Genie) behave properly.

One would think if the HR24-500 is a known GG problem, the DIRECTV support staff would know this. It is frustrating when end users such as the folks on the forums are far more proficient than the DIRECTV support staff.

If I try to stream, I get a message "HD DVR too busy, try streaming later". If I try to download, any and all programs freeze at "waiting to prepare". The HR24 is connected to the internet and its content can be seen on any other DVR via whole-home, but GG access is futile. Did a full 2 min hard reset, no improvement.

All other DVR's (HR20-700. HR21-100. and Genie) behave properly.

One would think if the HR24-500 is a known GG problem, the DIRECTV support staff would know this. It is frustrating when end users such as the folks on the forums are far more proficient than the DIRECTV support staff.

DirecTV is very well aware of this issue. Now the CSRs, that is another story. But there is a reason for that.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Leftcoastdave likes this

Here’s to the crazy ones.
The misfits. The rebels.
The the troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes.

The ones who see things different.
They’re not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status quo.

I opened an incident with tech support last week. In a follow up call the GG support center gave up and escalated the problem to Engineering.

Last evening I got a call from a GG expert who advised me there was a workaround that has gotten HR24-500 users back on the air vis a vis GG. Engineering contacted a case management guy who walked me through a DVR procedure that effectively reset and reloaded everything except the recorded content. After a 30 minute journey which included a trip through diagnostic screens and keypad entries that I never knew exisited, the DVR and GG were playing well together.

Bottom line, after the HR24 reset, my DVR is gleefully preparing and downloading content previously ignored by GG. For those of you in need, the GG support hotline is 800-442-1635. The entire support staff consists of 4 guys scattered across planet earth.

Also, FWIW, I learned there are probably less than 2,500 GG's shipped and installed in the USA. A surprisingly low number given the DIRECTV subscriber base of close to 30,000,000.

Glad you got it working. Perhaps you can share the keystrokes you used? So it can be paid forward. Or a PM to me if you arent comfortable sharing it openly.

Also the 800 number is a general escalation number where a PIN gets you to someone to has access to more tools. Not just GG but could be anything.

I would be happy to share, but the truth is I cannot remember most of the permutations he took me through.

It was an interactive reset that took us the better part of 20 minutes to complete. Restarting the HR24 via a set of diagnostic screens was intermixed with resetting the remote control to AV2 (for DVR #3 because I have two others in the same equipment stack). Programming the remote control is of course well known and well documented elsewhere on the forums.

I think he had me long press "select" at some point during the power up sequence. I am pretty sure it was before we ever got to steps 1 and 2 of downloading. At that juncture we entered a series of yellow text on black background diagnostic screens each requiring specific selections. There were at least 5 of these screens. Later in the process we keyboarded 2-4-6-8 to return to normal power up (I think that is right). After the reset was complete we went into the normal menus to set recording defaults and power management. Once I saw the perfectly intact playlist, I promptly forgot how we got there.

Any additional info would be pure speculation on my part. All I can say is it was a lengthy process that he described as a "workaround" known to only a few folks in his posse. He wasn't being secretive, he just said this HR24 problem has only come up 2 or 3 times before and that he developed the workaround on his own. He did say he was 3 for 3 on fixing the misbehaving DVR's.

The permanent fix is still under development but probably not forthcoming any time soon. The engineers are buried trying to get GenieGo2 into Beta. And he wouldn't offer an opinion on when that might be.

Sorry I could not be more specific. I was on the phone yesterday afternoon for 65 mins w/level 1 and an hour later on the phone with Mr. Fixit for an additional 35 minutes. By the time we instituted a fix, I was suffering from DVR PTSD having struggled with GG startup glitches and functional troubleshooting for the past 4 days.

EDIT: Let me add my thanks to all of you who took the time to chime in on this thread. The pointer to the HR24 as the culprit was the catalyst to finding a solution. As you can tell I have been around these forums since 2004 (and AVS since 2001). I am not an early adopter by nature, but I have been doing this sort of tinkering ever since I bought my first ReplayTV in 1Q1999. DBSTalk and AVS are my go to sites when I need help on a problem of this nature. Thanks again for your collective assistance. Life is so much easier because of your expertise and willingness to help other users.

[...] Also, FWIW, I learned there are probably less than 2,500 GG's shipped and installed in the USA. A surprisingly low number given the DIRECTV subscriber base of close to 30,000,000.

That is a surprisingly low number! Thanks for sharing, and glad you're up and running.

[...] Finally, many can't abide by its designed-in limitations.

Can't speak for others, but please don't quote me in an attempt to disparage a DIRECTV product and service that I like a lot.

Upon reflection, I believe the low GenieGo uptake is simply due to the fact they're not advertising it on TV. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that 99% of customers don't visit the DIRECTV web site or forums like this, and they're completely unaware the product exists. Just my .02.

For me, the less I know about the GG the more likely I would have been to get it. After reading the many posts in this forum about it, I wouldn't bother unless they gave it to me.

And it is one of a few reasons I decided to dual-sub. With my Hopper w/Sling it is simple to transfer nearly anything to my iPad or some Android devices. And in the case of using the iPad I can then mirror to a big screen in good resolution via an AppleTV. Simple and elegant and works with almost zero issues.

With my Hopper w/Sling it is simple to transfer nearly anything to my iPad or some Android devices. And in the case of using the iPad I can then mirror to a big screen in good resolution via an AppleTV. Simple and elegant and works with almost zero issues.

Based on my own experience with GG, I could say the same, except for "big screen" resolution, which is not something I'm looking for when away from home. For my phones and tablet, the lower resolution file sizes allow more content to be stored and the PQ is adequate, IMO.

Based on my own experience with GG, I could say the same, except "big screen" resolution, which is not something I'm looking for when away from home. For my phones and tablet, the lower resolution file sizes allow more content to be stored and the PQ is adequate, IMO.

I seldom watch shows on very small screens like the phone or tablet, I don't hardly ever watch them on the 24" PS3 3D display my Super Joey is connected to!!

But I do transfer a few movies that I get because of my sub level to the iPad and take it and my AppleTV up to my mom's for trips about 4 times a year and we watch them on their big screen. Very handy and simple to do.

I seldom watch shows on very small screens like the phone or tablet, I don't hardly ever watch them on the 24" PS3 3D display my Super Joey is connected to!!

But I do transfer a few movies that I get because of my sub level to the iPad and take it and my AppleTV up to my mom's for trips about 4 times a year and we watch them on their big screen. Very handy and simple to do.

Gotcha. Based on how you use it, GG as currently implemented is not a good fit for your needs. That said, I wouldn't be surprised if a future update to the GG2 will allow an option for transcoding at 2200 kbps, like the TiVo Stream. Based on file sizes, I'm guessing the current GG is transcoding at about 1000kbps -1200 kbps, so 2200 would be a big step up in resolution.